.  >- 


Clarence  W.  Alvord.  The  Old  Kaskaskia 
"Records:  An  address  read  before  the  " 
Chicago  Historical  Society,  2.2.1906 


The   Old   Kaskaskia   Records 


CLARENCE    WALWORTH    ALVORD 

UNIVERSITY    OF    UJLINOIS 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


mums  WSTORICAL  SURVEY 


The  Old  Kaskaskia  Records 


AN  ADDRESS  READ  BEFORE 
THE  CHICAGO  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY, 

FEBRUARY  2,  1906 

BY 


CLARENCE    WALWORTH    ALVORI> 

UNIVERSITY    OF    U/LESTOIS 


THE  OLD  KASKASKIA  RECORDS, 


I  have  an  announcement  to  make  to  you  to-night;  an 
announcement  of  great  interest  to  students  of  Illinois  his- 
tory, and  one  which  could  be  made  in  no  more  fitting  place 
than  the  home  of  the  Chicago  Historical  Society,  which  has 
accomplished  more  for  the  history  of  our  commonwealth 
than  any  other  institution,  and  with  which  have  been  as- 
sociated men,  whose  industry  and  scholarship  have  blazed 
the  road  over  which  their  successors  are  traveling.  The 
announcement  is  this :  the  Kaskaskia  records,  long  sup- 
posed to  be  lost,  have  been  found.  At  the  present  time 
when  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi  are  crumbling  away  the 
last  walls  of  the  old  village,  there  has  been  brought  to  light 
the  records  of  her  romantic  past,  reaching  back  to  the  time 
when  she  was  one  of  the  most  hopeful  supports  of  a  French 
king's  world-policy,  to  the  time  when  hardy  frontiersmen 
snatched  her  from  a  British  king's  hands  and  established 
a  form  of  democratic  government.  The  records,  therefore, 
.  date  from  a  period  of  seventy  years,  during  which  time 
Illinois  was  under  three  distinct  governments. 

The  announcement  of  the  discovery  of  such  a  collec- 
r  tion  naturally  calls  forth  a  series  of  questions  in  regard  to 
the  origin,  the  hiding  place,  the  condition,  character  and 
-    contents  of  the  papers,  which  it  is  my  purpose  to  answer 
-5    to-night.     The  subject  of  the  address  is,  therefore,  the  his- 
tory of  the  Kaskaskia  records. 

Kaskaskia  was  founded  in  the  year  1700  by  the  Jesuit 
missionaries,  but  there  is  no  evidence  of  an  orderly  govern- 
ment in  the  district  until  twenty  years  later.  Records  and 
legal  instruments  for  the  years  1700  to  1720  are  totally  lack- 
ing in  the  Kaskaskia  collection  and  it  may  be  inferred  that 
there  was  no  regular  place  of  deposit  for  such  documents,  so 
that  whatever  papers  may  have  been  drawn  up  have  been 
lost.  But  with  the  year  of  the  erection  of  Fort  de  Chartres 
or  rather  three  years  later,  1723,  such  haphazard  and  irre- 
sponsible rule  came  to  an  end.  We  find,  from  that  date,  the 
civil  officials  of  an  orderly  French  government,  perform- 

35 


ing  their  duties  with  a  regularity  and  ptecision  that  re- 
minds us  of  the  system  and  care  of  their  contemporaries  in 
a  royal  jurisdiction  of  France.  Their  minutes  and  records 
were  carefully  kept  and,  when  law  demanded  it,  deposited 
in  the  archives  of  the  fort.  Here  then  is  the  beginning  of 
the  Kaskaskia  collection  of  records.  The  archives,  wherein 
were  deposited  the  earliest  of  the  papers,  were  situated  with- 
in the  circle  of  the  walls  of  the  fort,  which  stood  for  so 
many  years  as  the  most  western  sentinel  of  the  French  king's 
domain. 

But  Fort  de  Chartres  was  not  the  only  post  in  Illinois, 
where  French  officials  resided  and  legal  papers  were  re- 
dacted. As  early  as  1737  a  clerk  of  the  French  court  dwelt 
at  Kaskaskia  and  even  earlier  a  royal  notary  practised  his 
calling  there.  Here  also  came  the  judge  from  the  fort  to 
hold  sessions  of  his  court.  There  are  reasons  for  believing 
that  for  a  few  years  Kaskaskia  was  made  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment.1 At  any  rate  the  archives  of  the  village  must  have 
slowly  filled  with  important  documents,  some  of  which  have 
been  preserved  to  our  day. 

In  1765  a  change  came  to  the  villages  on  the  bottom 
lands  of  the  Mississippi ;  the  lilies  of  France  were  replaced 
by  the  standard  of  the  English,  and  British  regulars  guarded 
the  fort  where  once  paced  the  soldiers  of  the  French  marine. 
Until  the  year  1772  the  British  commandants  made  their 
headquarters  at  Fort  de  Chartres  and  all  governmental  and 
legal  papers  were  deposited  there;  but  that  curse  of  these 
bottom  lands,  the  Mississippi  floods,  finally  compelled  the 
commandant  to  abandon  the  fort  and  remove  the  seat  of 
government  to  Kaskaskia.2  Therefore  in  the  year  1772  the 
two  archives  of  Fort  de  Chartres  and  Kaskaskia  were  united 
and  the  recently  discovered  collection  contains  records  from 
both  places.  We  know  that  the  British  commandants  made 
their  headquarters  in  the  Jesuit  buildings ;  and  from  the 
legend  of  the  hiding  of  some  of  the  despatches  by  Madame 
de  Rocheblave,  we  may  infer  that  the  official  papers  were 
kept  within  this  temporary  fort ;  but  there  must  have  been, 
previous  to  the  British  occupation,  another  place  of  deposit 
for  the  purely  legal  documents,  which  continued  to  be  used 
throughout  the  succeeding  years. 

"For  a  discussion  of  the  site  of  the  seat  of  government  under  the 
French,  see  Bulletin  of  the  Illinois  State  Hist.  Lib.,  Vol.  I.,  No.  1,  p.  12. 

2Moses,  Illinois,  Historical  and  Statistical,  I.,  142  ;  Mason,  Illinois  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  42. 

36 


In  1778  occurred  thai  famous  exploit  of  George  Rogers 
Clark,  which  won  for  the  United  States  this  great  North- 
west. Virginia  established  three  centers  of  government  in 
the  conquered  territory,  at  Kaskaskia,  Cahokia,  and  Vin- 
cennes,  so  that  from  this  time  there  were  three  important 
depositories  for  documents  in  Illinois;  but  from  the  first 
Kaskaskia  was  considered  the  county  seat  of  the  county  of 
Illinois  and  here  were  drawn  up  and  deposited  those  papers 
which  were  of  common  interest  to  all  three  communities.1 

From  this  review  of  the  history  of  the  French  records 
throughout  the  eighteenth  century,  it  is  seen,  that,  at  the 
coming  of  Governor  St.  Clair  in  1790  to  establish  the  ter- 
ritorial government  over  these  regions,  the  majority  of  the 
Illinois  papers  from  the  French,  British  and  Virginia  periods 
had  been  collected  in  Kaskaskia  and  were  transferred  at  that 
time  to  the  custody  of  the  officials  of  the  newly  established 
county  of  St.  Clair.  When  five  years  later  this  county  was 
divided,  no  change  was  made  in  their  place  of  deposit,  Kas- 
kaskia, as  county-seat  of  Randolph  County,  still  keeping 
them.  There  is  no  'evidence  that  there  was  ever  a  division 
of  the  documents  between  Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia,  as  has 
been  sometimes  stated.  Each  village  retained  the  papers, 
which  were  at  the  time  in  her  archives,  and  the  officials  of 
Cahokia  copied  such  of  the  Kaskaskia  records  as  were  of 
interest  to  the  northern  county,  which  copies  may  be  found 
in  "Record  A"  of  the  recorder's  orfice  at  Belleville. 

When  Vandalia  was  made  the  capital  of  the  State,  the 
eighteenth  century  records,  no  longer  of  any  legal  value, 
were  not  carried  to  the  new  capital;  but  remained  in  the 
custody  of  the  officials  of  Randolph  county,  in  Kaskaskia, 
where  they  still  were  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Poetic  justice  would  have  been  satisfied,  if  these  old 
records  could  have  always  remained  in  the  archives  of 
Kaskaskia  as  a  monument  of  her  romantic  past  ;  but  Nature 
herself  intervened.  The  Mississippi  frequently  flooded  the 
town,  driving  away  the  inhabitants,  until  relatively  few 
voices  were  left  to  protect  her  traditional  rights.  Finally 
the  great  inundation  of  1844  proved  to  the  people  of  Ran- 
dolph county  that  their  own  county  records  were  not  safe 
in  the  town  of  the  bottom  lands.  In  1847  the  vote  was  taken. 
The  county-seat  was  removed  to  Chester.  There  had  been 


"The   County   of   Illinois,"    in   Amer.   HM.   Rev.,   IV.,    No.   4, 
passim. 

37 


great  opposition  to  this  change  and  charges  of  fraud  were 
freely  made  against  the  people  of  Chester  for  illegal  voting. 
On  account  of  these  charges  the  county  officials  at  first  re- 
fused to  remove  their  offices ;  but  finally  yielded,  the  county- 
clerk  in  December  of  1847  or  soon  after,  the  recorder  de- 
laying until  March  of  1848.  Temporary  quarters  were  pro- 
vided for  the  records  of  the  various  offices  in  the  second 
story  of  a  frame  building,  until  the  new  court-house  could 
be  finished,  which  was  in  the  summer  of  1850,  when  the 
records  were  transferred  to  safer  quarters.  Since  the  office 
of  the  circuit  court  and  recorder  was  too  small  to  accom- 
modate all  the  documents,  the  old  French  papers  with  other 
court  and  county  records,  old  ledgers,  day-books  ar-1  rub- 
bish such  as  accumulates  in  a  court-house  were  left  in  uhe 
dry  goods  boxes,  in  which  they  had  been  brought  from 
Kaskaskia.  For  about  ten  years  these  stood  in  the  hall  of 
the  building,  exposed  to  the  depredations  of  the  passer-by. 
About  1868  they  were  placed  on  the  landing  of  the  stair- 
case. Some  time  prior  to  1878,  the  deputy  circuit  clerk 
packed  the  old  papers  in  sacks  and  packages,  which  he 
placed  on  top  of  the  bookcase  in  his  office,  where  they  re- 
mained until  their  discovery  last  summer.1 

My  own  interest  in  Illinois  history  began  about  a  year 
ago,  when  I  was  sent  by  the  Illinois  State  Historical  Library 
to  report  on  an  old  French  record  in  Belleville,  in  the  St. 
Clair  court-house  has  been  preserved  what  is  left  of  the 
Cahokia  records,  which  have  proved  very  valuable  for  the 
period  following  the  conquest  by  George  Rogers  Clark ;  but 
of  earlier  date  a  record-book  from  the  French  period  is  all 
that  remains.2  The  mission  to  Belleville  was  so  successful 
that  the  trustees  of  the  Historical  Library  decided  to  send 
me  into  the  field  for  a  month  last  summer. 

Naturally  all  those  interested  in  the  undertaking  thought 
of  the  Kaskaskia  records ;  but  we  were  confronted  by  a  very 
well  established  tradition  that  they  had  been  destroyed,  a 
tradition  which  was  believed  by  the  most  painstaking  of  his- 
torians of  Illinois,  E.  G.  Mason  of  your  society,  and  to 
which  he  gave  currency  in  his  account  of  John  Todd's  "Rec- 

'From  information  furnished  me  by  Mr.  Harry  W.  Roberts  and  Supt. 
Maurice  Mudd  of  Chester.  See,  also,  History  of  Randolph,  Munroe  and 
Perry  Counties,  Philadelphia,  1883,  pp.  121  et  seq. 

2Perrin,  "The  Oldest  Civil  Record  in  the  West,"  in  Transactions  of 
the  111.  State  Hist.  Soc.,  1901,  p.  64  ;  Bulletin  of  the  111.  State  Hist.  Lib., 
Vol.  I.,  Nc.  1,  pp.  1  et  seq. 


orcl-Book."1    In  his  two  publications  on  that  subject  he  tells 

substantially  the  same  story  :  "The  original  record-book  kept 

by  Col.  Todd  during  his  residence  in  the  County  of  Illinois 

has  been  preserved  to  our  time  by  the  merest  chance.  In  No-  ., 

vember,  1879,  a  visitor  at  Kaskaskia  learned  that  the  old  doc- 

uments formerly  kept  there  had  been  removed  to  the  neigh- 

boring town  of  Chester,  when  it  became  the  county-seat  of 

Randolph  County,  Illinois.    Upon  inquiry  at  the  latter  place, 

he  was  informed  that  several  chests  of  these  papers  had  stood 

for  years  in  the  hall  of  the  court-house,  until  the  greater 

part  of  their  contents  had  been  destroyed.     A  small  box 

had  been  filled  with  those  that  remained  a  few  years  before, 

and  placed  in  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  building.    These  had 

also  disappeared,  and  it  was  ascertained  that  they  had  been 

distributed  among  the  different  offices  to  be  used  as  kindling, 

and  all  had  been  burned  except  one  old  book,  which  wras 

found  in  a  receptacle  for  fuel  in  the  county-clerk's  apart- 

ment.    And  this  upon  examination  proved  to  be  Col.  John 

Todd's   Record-Book,  which  subsequently  by  vote  of  the 

commissioners  of  Randolph  County,  was  deposited     with 

the  Chicago  Historical  Society  for  safe-keeping." 

Mr.  Mason  does  not  tell  us  the  name  of  this  visitor,  who 
found  the  record,  and  it  does  not  appear  on  the  records  of 
your  society,  of  April  27,  1880,  when  action  was  taken  on 
the  reception  of  the  record-book  ;  but  it  is  probable  that  Mr. 
Mason  thus  modestly  conceals  his  own  action. 

The  tradition  of  the  loss  of  the  documents  was  strength- 
ened and  given  wide  currency  in  Chester  in  1883  by  the 
publication  of  a  "History  of  Randolph,  Monroe  and  Perry 
Counties."  In  it  occurs  the  following  paragraph  :  "We  have  A  f  /  -  ? 
spent  days  in  search  of  those  election  returns  (i.  e.  the  elec- 
tion returns  for  the  court  established  by  John  Todd  in  1779) 
which  would  have  furnished  a  list  of  names  of  the  voting 
population  of  the  territory  and  been  equivalent  to  a  census. 
The  search  was  in  vain.  The  documents  had  been  lost  or 
destroyed.  An  effort  to  save  them,  made  by  Hon.  W.  C. 
Flagg,  while  senator  of  Madison  County,  in  1869,  proved 
abortive,  for  the  officer  in  custody  of  those  documents  per- 
emptorily refused  to  let  Mr.  Flagg  have  them.  The  latter, 
fully  aware  of  the  historical  value  of  many  of  those  docu- 
ments, pledged  himself  to  return  them,  arranged  in  chrono- 


,  John  Todd,  CJiictjfjo  Historical  Society  Collections,  Vol.  IV., 
p.  288  ;  see  also  his  Illinois  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  49. 

39 


logical  order  and  substantially  bound  at  his  own  expense, 
as  soon  as  he  had  copied  the  most  interesting  documents.  All 
was  in  vain.  S.  St.  Vrain  would  listen  to  no  proposals  of  the 
kind,  although  the  county  authorities  had  made  an  order 
to  transmit  those  documents  to  Mr.  Flagg.  Was  it  a  sense 
of  duty  that  prompted  St.  Vrain  to  disobey?  Who  knows? 
The  result  of  his  refusal  is  in  any  event  to  be  deplored."1 

Another  account  of  the  finding  of  John  Todd's  record- 
book  is  contained  in  this  same  volume  and  since  it  differs 
slightly  from  that  given  by  Mason,  it  is  worth  quoting: 
"This  Record-Book  was  found  among  a  number  of  docu- 
ments removed  from  Kaskaskia  to  Chester  in  1847,  and  is 
now  in  possession  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Chicago. 
Robert  G.  Detrick,  Esq.,  of  Chester,  took  the  precaution 
of  making*  a  complete  copy  of  the  contents  of  said  r?cord- 
book,  before  placing  it  in  the  custody  of  said  society."2  It 
is  to  be  noticed  that  the  writer  speaks  of  "a  number  of  docu- 
ments," as  if  Todd's  book  was  but  one  of  a  collection.  These 
may  be  the  French  documents  in  your  library,  which  I  sup- 
pose must  have  been  obtained  at  the  same  time  tliat  Todd's 
book  was  deposited  here  ;  but  it  is  strange  that  three  other 
books  of  record,  which  as  far  as  I  know,  have  never  been 
hidden  from  view,  but  have  always  had  their  place  on  the 
shelves  of  the  office  of  the  circuit-clerk,  were  not  at  the 
same  time  acquired  for  your  library  by  Mr.  Mason. 

When  I  arrived  in  Chester  last  summer,  this  well  estab- 
lished tradition  was  told  me  with  further  embellishments. 
For  years  the  records  had  been  kept  in  boxes  on  the  stair- 
landing  of  the  court-house;  until  a  janitor  of  the  building, 
named  McMillan,  who  had  been  a  publisher  of  a  newspaper, 
sold  them  to  a  St.  Louis  paper  factory.  But  this  did  not 
occur,  before  many  had  been  destroyed  in  the  way  sug- 
gested by  Mr.  Mason's  story.  The  basis  for  the  tradition 
of  the  destruction  of  these  records  rests  on  two  facts.  The 
officials  of  Chester  were  generally  ignorant  of  the  transfer- 
ence of  the  papers  to  the  circuit-clerk's  office  and  they  did 
know  that  the  janitor  used  old  papers,  such  as  assessors' 
schedules,  for  building  fires.  The  inference  was  simple. 
The  disappearance  of  the  French  records  from  the  dry  goods 
boxes  on  the  staircase  was  due  to  the  carelessness  of  the 


91. 

2Ibid,  p.  89. 


janitor  in  choosing  his  kindling  paper.  The  story  was  re- 
peated, was  put  in  print  by  Mr.  Mason,  grew  in  detail  with 
the  passing  of  years  and  came  to  be  the  official  story  in 
Chester. 

In  spite  of  the  tradition  there  are  many  who  knew  that 
in  Chester  there  were  some  old  French  records.  Before 
starting,  two  of  my  colleagues  informed  me  that  they  had 
seen  such  there,  and  one  has  told  me  the  same,  since  my 
return.  Also  Mr.  Mudd,  Superintendent  of  Schools  in  Ran- 
dolph county,  wrote  that  there  were  three  record-books  in 
the  court-house.  Many  others  probably  possessed  the  same 
knowledge. 

The  actual  discovery  required  no  occult  science,  for  the 
three  record-books  were  taken  from  the  shelves  of  the  office 
of  the  circuit-clerk.  When  asked  about  other  records,  the 
story  of  their  total  destruction  was  told  by  gentlemen,  who 
were  in  the  office.  However,  search  was  made.  The  book- 
shelves of  the  office  do  not  reach  to  the  ceiling,  and  their 
top  is  surmounted  by  a  cornice,  thus  forming  an  easily  sus- 
pected hiding  place.  Here  were  found,  if  the  word  can  be 
used  in  regard  to  that  which  was  never  really  lost,  three 
large  sacks  and  four  packages  of  papers,  marked,  "Old 
French  Records."  Upon  examination  only  part  of  them 
proved  to  be  French  records,  for  over  half  were  court  writs 
of  every  kind  from  the  last  decade  of  the  eighteenth  and 
the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  centuries.  Very  few  of  these 
latter  had  either  legal  or  historical  value.  After  picking  out 
the  old  French  papers  and  those  English  ones  that  appeared 
to  be  of  interest,  the  county  commissioners  were  petitioned 
to  loan  them  temporarily  to  the  University  of  Illinois,  that 
they  might  be  arranged  and  studied.  This  petition  was 
granted  and  the  papers  are  at  present  in  the  library  of  the 
State  university. 

The  number  of  documents  thus  found  according  to  the 
committee  appointed  by  the  county  commissioners  of  Ran- 
dolph county  to  count  them,  before  sending  them  to  the 
University  of  Illinois,  is  2,950 ;  but  since  many  of  the  papers 
University  of  Illinois,  is  2,950.  Considering  the  vicissitudes 
through  which  they  have  passed,  their  condition  is  excellent. 
Some  of  them  show  the  effects  of  the  wear  of  time,  others 
have  been  exposed  to  water  and  are  almost  illegible,  others 
have  suffered  from  the  ravages  of  insects  and  mice,  and 
others  from  the  careless  handling  of  clerks  and  the  curious, 


41 


but  on  the  whole  the  great  majority  of  them  are  uninjured 
and  easily  decipherable. 

That  the  old  records  have  passed  through  the  numerous 
changes  of  government  and  the  other  dangers  to  which  they 
have  been  exposed,  seems  almost  miraculous.  Serious  loss 
they  have  unquestionably  sustained,  but  on  the  whole  a  very 
large  number  have  been  preserved.  Many  of  the 
papers  and  record-books  wrere  carried  to  New  Orleans  by 
the  French  officials,  Commandant  Villiers  and  Judge  Valen- 
tine Bobe  Declauseaux,  before  the  territory  was  surrendered 
to  the  British,  and  some  of  them  may  be  in  that  city  to-day. 
Others  may  have  been  carried  to  St.  Louis  at  the  same  time. 
I  have  traced  the  trail  of  one  such  record  and  since  the  story 
of  its  wandering  illustrates  the  life  history  of  others,  which 
may  have  been  lost,  I  will  repeat  it  for  you.  In  the  Belle- 
ville archives  there  has  been  preserved  a  "Record  of  the 
Registrations  of  Donations"  kept  by  successive  clerks  of  the 
French  government  during  the  years  1737  to  1769.  Until 
the  year  1754  the  registrations  were  made  in  Kaskaskia; 
from  that  date  till  1765,  i.  e.  till  the  end  of  the  French  re- 
gime, in  Fort  de  Chartres ;  and  after  that  date  in  St.  Louis. 
Remember  the  book  was  found  in  Belleville.  The  explana- 
tion of  the  wandering  of  this  record  is  as  follows:  The 
last  clerk  of  the  French  regime  was  Joseph  Labuxiere,  who 
went  with  St.  Ange  to  St.  Louis,  after  Fort  de  Chartres  had 
been  delivered  to  the  British.  Being  a  prudent  man  and 
knowing  well  that  he  could  collect  five  livres  from  each 
person  requiring  a  copy  of  any  will  or  donation  in  this 
record-book,  he  took  it  with  him ;  and  I  suspect  that  he  car- 
ried other  books  of  record  from  his  office  for  the  same  rea- 
son. Not  enjoying  life  under  the  Spanish  rule,  perhaps,  or 
seeing  better  opportunities  for  a  trained  French  notary  and 
clerk  on  the  American  side,  he  went  to  Cahokia  to  settle  in 
1782;  and  still  with  an  eye  to  future  profits  tucked  the 
volume  under  his  arm,  when  he  crossed  the  river.  Later  he 
was  appointed  clerk  of  the  Virginia  court  at  Cahokia,  and 
evidently  deposited  the  book  in  the  office,  whence  it  was  car- 
ried to  Belleville,  when  that  city  was  made  the  county-seat.1 
Other  records  may  not  have  been  so  fortunate  as  this  and,  as 
I  said  before,  still  others  may  be  in  New  Orleans.  At  any 
rate  considering  the  number  of  books  of  record  required 

lBuUetin  of  the  111.  State  Hist.  Lib.,  Vol.  I.,  No.  1. 


to  be  kept  by  the  French  government,  very  few  have  come 
down  to  our  time. 

In  spite  of  the  story  of  the  concealment  of  the  British 
papers  by  Madame  Rocheblave  at  the  time  Kaskaskta  was 
captured  by  Clark,  we  prefer  to  believe  the  account  of  Cap- 
tain Bowman,  Clark's  lieutenant,  that  all  the  instructions  to 
Rocheblave  from  the  British  governors  were  captured.1  Of 
the  legal  papers  no  mention  is  made  and  there  seems  no  rea  - 
son  to  believe  that  any  were  lost  at  that  time.  Since  the 
United  States  took  possession  of  the  territory,  in  1790,  in 
a  peaceful  manner,  there  could  have  been  no  loss  of  docu- 
ments from  the  archives  on  account  of  the  change. 

Therefore  we  conclude  that  the  only  serious  loss  due  to 
change  of  government  was  in  1765,  when  the  French  left 
the  country.  With  this  exception,  which  was  unquestionably 
a  very  costly  one,  there  was  no  disaster  to  cause  the  loss  of 
any  document  from  the  beginning  of  the  regular  govern- 
ment under  the  French  till  the  time  when  Governor  St.  Clair 
took  possession  for  the  United  States  in  1790.  Unfortunate- 
ly for  us  disasters  were  not  needed.  The  carelessness  of 
clerks,  the  Mississippi  floods  and  the  fraudulent  and  crim- 
inal purposes  of  men  have  destroyed  much  that  the  fortunes 
of  war  had  spared ;  for  when  these  documents  were  handed 
over  to  the  keeping  of  a  United  States  official,  their  condi- 
tion was  only  less  worse  than  at  present,  as  we  shall  learn. 

Since  1790  the  principal  damage  to  the  papers  may  be 
charged  to  the  carelessness  of  clerks  and  the  vandalism  of 
the  curious  and  others.  Although  the  story  of  their  total 
destruction  by  the  janitor  has  fortunately  proved  false  and 
although  no  such  act  of  barbarism  is  known  to  have  oc- 
curred in  Chester  as  did  in  Belleville  only  a  few  years  ago, 
when  large  numbers  of  old  records  were  burned ;  still  the 
loss  from  this  cause  must  have  been  great,  as  is  proved  from 
the  condition  of  the  record-books.  Probably  the  bundles  of 
papers  have  suffered  relatively  less,  since  they  are  less  easily 
torn.  I  ought  to  say  in  justice  to  the  officials  in  Chester  that 
Mr.  Roberts  of  that  city,  who  has  made  a  very  careful  study 
of  the  history  of  the  French  records  since  they  were  brought 
there,  has  been  unable  to  find  any  evidence  of  wanton  de- 
struction, or  even  of  extraordinary  carelessness. 

The  second  source  of  loss  to  the  collection  has  been 
of  a  different  character  and  at  times  has  resulted  in  a  posi- 

1  Mason,   PJiiHppe   de  Rochelncc,  Chicago  Hist.  Soc.   Collections,  Vol. 
IV.,  p.  373. 

43 


tive  gain  to  historical  knowledge.  Many  visitors  to  Chester 
upon  showing  an  interest  in  these  documents  have  been  al- 
lowed to  carry  away  some  of  them.  Many  of  these  have 
found  their  way  into  libraries,  where  they  have  been  pre- 
served. For  instance  in  your  own  library  there  are  fifty 
such  papers  and  among  them  the  famous  John  Todd's  Rec- 
ord-book, the  principal  source  of  our  present  knowledge  of 
the  period  following  the  conquest  by  George  Rogers  Clark. 
Also  in  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Library  there  is  a  record 
book  dating  from  the  British  period. 

Of  all  the  records  drawn  up  in  the  French  communi- 
ties during  the  eighteenth  century,  how  many  have  been 
preserved?  For  this  calculation  there  exist  data  of  two 
kinds,  neither  of  which  will  give  exact  results ;  but  upon 
which  may  be  based  an  estimate  sufficiently  near  the  truth  to 
give  an  idea  of  the  loss  which  the  collection  has  suffered. 

In  Record-book  A.  in  the  recorder's  office  of  the  St. 
Clair  court-house  is  the  copy  of  a  receipt  given  by  the  first 
territorial  recorder  of  St.  Clair  County,  William  St.  Clair, 
to  Frangois  Carbonneaux  of  the  Virginia  court  at  Kaskaskia. 
It  is  dated  at  Kaskaskia,  June  12,  1790.  In  part  it  reads 
as  follows: 

"Received  from  the  hands  of  Francois  Caboneaux 
the  following  Public  Papers  relative  to  the  Recorder's  office 
which  were  in  his  hands  as  acting  Recorder.  Three  Bundles 
of  papers  stitched  entitled  papier  Terrier  one — 'ditto — ditto 
— One  Book  Called  a  Register  wanting  at  the  beginning 
sixteen  pages  also  pages  fifty  three  and  four  which  appears 
to  have  been  fraudulently  torn  out,  ends  as  it  is  numbered 
with  page  three  hundred  and  seventy-nine.  Book  the  second 
also  stiled  a  Register  pages  twenty-four  twenty-five  twenty- 
six  and  twenty-seven  are  the  greatest  part  Cut  away  for 
what  purpose  I  know  not  The  beginning  and  end  of  the 
Book  also  stiled  a  Register  being  two  quire  paper  stitched 
containing  in  the  first  part  sixteen  pages  second  part  ten 
pages  third  part  eighteen  pages  fourth  part  wanting  pages 
three  and  four  containing  as  it  is  numbered  thirty  four 
pages  another  Book  which  is  called  a  Register  from  page 
twenty  two  to  seventy  five  has  been  torn  out  of  the  Book 
and  others  Visibly  substituted  in  their  stead  also  pages 
seventy  five  seventy  six  seventy  seven  and  seventy  eight  are 
torn  away  from  page  seventy  nine  to  eighty  six  is  also 
wanting  and  at  page  Ninety  as  numbered.  A  book  part  of 


14 


which  is  torn  away  and  the  pages  all  false  numbered  so 
that  I  have  not  thought  proper  to  examine  it  as  it  never  can 
be  produced  as  an  authentic  record  One  book  I  have  re- 
ceived from  his  Excellency  the  Governor  which  appears  to 
be  in  tolerable  good  condition  ends  with  page  four  hundred 
and  fourty  four." 

There  follows  a  list  of  papers  which  he  calls  sales  and 
which  are  arranged  according  to  the  year  of  redaction.  The 
earliest  is  dated  1722  and  the  latest  1790.  Their  total  num- 
ber is  1,308. 

The  remembrance  of  copying  this  receipt  of  William 
St.  Clair  was  a  source  of  gratification  to  me,  when  later  the 
Kaskaskia  papers  came  into  my  hands ;  for  I  expected  to 
learn  easily  how  many  of  them  had  been  preserved;  but 
alas !  the  information  is  after  all  very  meagre.  In  no  case 
does  St.  Clair  mention  the  nature  of  the  registers,  so  that 
the  only  basis  of  a  comparison  is  the  general  make-up  of  the 
books.  Unfortunately  hard  usage  during  the  last  century 
has  left  them  in  a  worse  condition  than  when  delivered  to 
the  United  States  government.  St.  Clair  describes  either 
five  or  six  books,  his  enumeration  and  description  being  in- 
definite, so  that  it  is  difficult  to  determine  which  is  the  cor- 
rect number.  Among  the  Kaskaskia  papers  there  are  three 
registers  and  loose  sheets  of  some  others.  Only  one  of  these 
can  I  identify  with  any  described  by  St.  Clair.  It  is  the 
last  one,  which  he  says  he  received,  "from  his  excellency  the 
Governor,"  and  which  contains  four  hundred  and  forty-four 
pages.  There  are  exactly  four  hundred  and  forty-four  pages 
in  one  of  the  Kaskaskia  record-books,  or  rather  were;  for 
some  few  leaves  are  missing  from  the  middle  of  the  book. 
The  two  others  are  so  imperfectly  preserved  that  identifica- 
tion is  impossible,  although  one  may  be  part  of  St.  Clair's 
third  register,  and  the  other  was  probably  not  included  in 
his  list  at  all,  for  it  is  not  a  register  but  an  alphabetical  in- 
dex of  notarial  acts,  of  which  he,  as  recorder,  took  no  notice. 
It  is  hopeless  to  attempt  any  identification  of  the  loose 
sheets. 

He  mentions  four  bundles  of  papers  stitched  entitled 
"Papier  Terrier,"  which  contained  a  list  of  the  land-holdings, 
drawn  up  when  Louis  XV.  still  controlled  the  destinies  of 
the  Mississippi  valley.  Only  a  few  torn  pages  of  these 
papers  remain,  which  is  strange,  since  they  were  the  oldest 
titles  to  land  and  were  found  of  the  greatest  value  by  the 

45 


United  States  land  commissioners.  That  papers,  which  were 
so  important  at  one  time  to  the  colonists,  have  totally  dis- 
appeared I  can  scarcely  believe,  and  hope  that  they  may 
some  time  be  found  in  their  forgotten  depository. 

St.  Clair's  list  of  notarial  instruments  was  the  greatest 
disappointment  to  me ;  for  he  confines  himself  to  listing  what 
he  calls  sales  and  even  describes  these  as  not  all  "sales  as  ex- 
pressed in  the  catalogue,  but  as  they  have  references  to  some 
sale  made  I  have  put  them  under  the  head  of  Sales."  What 
has  he  thus  classified  as  sales  ?  I  may  use  my  Yankee  priv- 
ilege of  guessing,  which  may  become  after  careful  compari- 
son almost  a  certainty;  for  to  the  class  of  notarial  acts 
known  as  sales,  he  has  probably  added  that  of  contracts 
in  regard  to  a  future  sale.  But  these  two  classes  do  not  ex- 
haust the  lists  of  French  notarial  acts.  St.  Clair  has  listed 
1,308  documents,  whereas  the  Kaskaskia  papers,  the  great 
majority  of  which  were  drawn  up  by  notaries,  number  about 
3,000.  In  the  course  of  time  I  may  be  able  to  make  some- 
thing out  of  the  receipt  of  St.  Clair ;  but  at  present  I  can  do 
little  more  than  indicate  the  difficulties  of  the  problem,  due 
largely  to  the  information,  which  he  has  given. 

There  is  a  second  means  of  making  an  estimate  of  the 
number  of  documents  that  were  originally  deposited  in  the 
archives  of  Illinois  during  the  three  periods  of  the  eighteenth 
century  history ;  but  since  my  study  of  the  Kaskaskia  papers 
is  so  very  incomplete,  the  result  is  only  the  roughest  kind 
of  a  guess.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  even  after  a  more 
detailed  study  a  more  satisfactory  result  will  not  be  obtained, 
since  the  data  are  at  best  meagre. 

One  of  the  books  of  record  found  in  Chester  is  an  index 
of  notarial  minutes  drawn  up  at  different  periods.  Original- 
ly it  was  much  more  complete  than  at  present,  for  many 
pages  have  been  lost  and  others  torn.  The  index 
was  evidently  carefully  kept  from  1720  to  1756,  from 
which  time  the  clerks  of  the  successive  courts  were  very 
careless,  although  sporadic  attempts  were  made  to  keep  it 
up  to  date.  The  earlier  index  is  alphabetical  and  was  made 
by  Bertlor  Barrios,  clerk  and  notary,  the  most  careful  and 
best  trained  man  holding  these  offices  in  Illinois  during  the 
eighteenth  century.  Since  his  index  of  the  minutes  of  his 
predecessors  is  badly  mutilated,  it  cannot  be  used  for  our 
purposes ;  but  fortunately  the  index  of  the  acts  deposited  in 
his  bureau  either  by  himself  or  others  during  the  years  1737 


46 


to  1756  is  in  perfect  condition.  The  number  thus  indexed  is 
2,029,  which  gives  an  average  of  106  a  year.  Since  very 
few  were  drawn  up  in  1720  and  1721,  I  shall  reckon  from 
1722.  If  this  average  of  106  was  maintained  from  1722  to 
1790,  there  were  7,208  notarial  instruments  redacted  during 
those  years. 

Two  serious  objections  may  be  made  to  this  estimate.  In 
the  first  place,  the  years  from  1737  to  1756  were  the  most 
prosperous  in  the  history  of  the  French  district  and  in  fact 
of  the  whole  eighteenth  century,  so  that  such  a  high  aver- 
age for  this  kind  of  document  was  not  maintained  through- 
out the  period.  In  the  second  place,  the  index  includes  only 
notarial  acts  and  leaves  out  court-records,  depositions,  pa- 
pers drawn  up  by  the  other  officials,  letters  of  instruction, 
official  correspondence,  etc.  Possibly  these  two  errors  may 
approximately  offset  each  other;  but  the  total  is  too  small 
rather  than  the  reverse,  I  am  inclined  to  think. 

Another  part  of  the  index  is  of  a  somewhat  different 
character  and  makes  possible  another  estimate.  It  is  the  list 
of-  papers,  received  by  the  clerk  of  the  court,  arranged  by 
years.  In  this  case  the  clerk  has  not  separated  his  duties 
as  notary  and  clerk,  so  that  the  index  includes  papers  of  all 
kinds,  such  as  ordinances,  papers  in  both  civil  and  criminal 
trials,  and  acts  of  other  officials  as  well  as  those  of  the 
notaries.  Only  a  few  years  of  this  record  have  been  pre- 
served, but  since  these  represent  different  periods,  we  have 
data  upon  which  to  base  an  average.  By  years,  the  number 
of  instruments  is:  1737,  180;  1752,  105;  1758,  85;  1783,  85; 
1784,  82.  The  average  is  105  papers  each  year,  being 
only  one  less  that  was  obtained  from  the  other 
data,  which  gave  a  total  of  over  7,000  for  the  entire  period 
from  1722  to  1790.  But  even  after  this  confirmation  of  the 
calculation,  the  total  must  be  regarded  as  too  small,  since 
the  official  correspondence  of  the  commandants  and  judges, 
military  papers  of  all  kinds,  and  all  the  documents  drawn 
up  by  the  numerous  officials  of  the  governments  are  not 
included.  Therefore  one  or  two  thousand  must  be  added 
to  the  total,  making  it  eight  or  nine  thousand.  Since  the 
papers  found  at  Chester  will  not  exceed  3,000,  I  estimate 
that  between  60  and  70  per  cent  of  the  Kaskaskia  papers 
have  been  lost.  The  loss  of  record-books  has  been  actually 
greater. 

Lamentable  as  is  this  loss  of  over  sixty  per  cent  of 

47 


the  papers,  it  will  be  far  more  profitable  to  rejoice  over  the 
preservation  of  so  many  than  to  waste  vain  regrets  over 
the  unrecoverable.  These  old  records  were  little  fitted  to 
survive  the  trying  times  of  frontier  life.  Their  only  defence 
against  the  rough  handling  by  backwoodsman  clerk  was  their 
antiquity  and  that  mystery  which  lurks  in  the  indecipherable 
page,  weapons  little  respected  by  the  strong  and  dauntless 
men  who  first  won  the  prairie  from  the  Indian,  and  then 
conquered  the  soil  itself.  To  such  men  the  silent  appeal  of 
these  old  papers  written  in  a  foreign  language  was  unin- 
telligible ;  to  them  the  past  of  which  the  papers  spoke  was 
nothing;  and  yet  the  frontiersmen  spared  them,  and  even 
their  immediate  successors  gave  them  room  in  the  court- 
house. Therefore,  I  repeat,  let  us  rejoice  over  what  has 
been  found  rather  than  lament  over  the  losses,  for  through 
the  preservation  of  these  papers  the  gain  to  our  knowledge 
of  eighteenth  century  Illinois  history  has  been  great;  how 
great,  it  is  my  purpose  to  indicate  to  you  in  the  latter  half 
of  this  address. 

"He  who  excuses,  accuses  himself,"  says  the  French 
proverb,  and  it  is  without  any  intention  of  asking  your  for- 
bearance for  the  incompleteness  of  this  report,  that  I  desire 
to  call  your  attention  to  its  limitations.  I  am  not  in  a  posi- 
tion to  pass  final  judgment  on  the  information  contained  in 
the  Kaskaskia  records,  because  I  have  not  yet  even  finished 
the  first  stage  of  my  work,  namely,  that  of  arranging  and 
cataloguing  them.  The  bundles,  in  which  they  were  bound 
by  the  last  person  who  opened  them,  are  without  order,  each 
generally  containing  papers  not  only  of  different  char- 
acter, but  also  from  various  years.  I  am  at  present  ar- 
ranging them  according  to  chronological  order  and  to  sub- 
ject matter.  The  work  progresses  slowly,  because  in  so 
many  cases  it  is  necessary  to  read  the  greater  part  of  a  docu- 
ment in  order  to  classify  it.  Although  not  yet  possessed  of 
full  knowledge  in  regard  to  the  papers,  the  invitation,  which 
you  so  kindly  sent  me,  induced  me  to  try  to  give  you  at  this 
time  some  information  regarding  them  by  which  you  may 
be  able  to  judge  of  their  importance. 

Before  starting  for  Chester  I  had  been  told  that  I  should 
find  there  some  old  French  records,  which  were  worthless. 
My  informant,  needless  to  say,  was  not  an  historian.  Still 
they  are,  for  the  most  part,  private  instruments  with  a  fair 
sprinkling  of  court  papers  and  other  documents.  Surely  the 

48 


layman  may  be  excused  for  regarding  them  as  worthless, 
however  curious  they  may  be.  Even  for  the  historian  they 
are  not  the  most  attractive  material  with  which  to  work,  for 
the  information  acquired  from  a  given  amount  of  time  spent 
upon  them  is  far  less  in  quantity  than  that  from  historical 
sources  of  another  kind.  The  quality,  however,  is  excel- 
lent, and  the  certainty  attained  is  refreshing  to  any  one  who 
has  worked  much  with  annals,  letters  or  histories.  In  this 
lies  the  charm  of  studying  documents  like  these,  the  cer- 
tainty of  the  results ;  for  if  you  can  only  interpret  them, 
their  testimony  is  as  positive  as  the  strata  of  rock  on  the 
mountan  side  to  the  geologist.  As  the  paleontologist  re- 
constructs a  strange  world  with  still  stranger  flora  and  fauna 
from  the  traces  and  remains  of  organism  embedded  in  the 
rock,  so  the  historian  from  these  survivals  of  actual  life — 
Ueberreste  the  Germans  call  them — can  recall  to  life  a  past 
society,  as  it  actually  existed.  These  records  are  nnt  ac- 
counts by  some  more  or  less  capable  person  of  what  he 
thought  occurred  in  the  past ;  but  the  records  of  those  occur- 
rences themselves ;  in  fact,  if  we  maintain  our  simile,  the 
footprints  and  bones  of  past  organisms. 

But  what  are  the  old  Kaskaskia  records?  The  great 
majority  of  them  are  notarial  minutes  of  instruments  drawn 
up  in  Fort  de  Chartres  or  Kaskaskia  between  the  vears 
1720  and  1790.  These  are  for  the  most  part  in  the  French 
language  and  follow  the  formulae  of  the  French  law.  The 
royal  French  notary,  like  his  successor  the  notary  of  modern 
France,  was  a  far  more  important  official  than  the  notary 
public  of  English  law,  for  his  acts  had  all  the  legal  lorce 
of  the  judgment  of  an  American  court.  In  all  the  affairs 
of  life  he  was  as  frequently  present  as  the  parish  priest. 
He,  in  fact,  played  the  counterpart  in  civil  life  to  that  of 
the  priest  in  ecclesiastical.  Like  the  latter  he  participated 
in  marriages  and  was  found  almost  as  frequently  at  the  side 
of  the  dying.  Then,  his  assistance  was  required  at  the 
formation  of  partnerships,  at  the  loan  of  money,  at  the  re- 
turn of  the  same,  for  drawing  up  leases,  at  the  settlement 
of  estates,  at  the  taking  of  inventories,  at  auctions,  at  all 
contracts,  whether  for  the  delivery  of  goods  or  for  labor 
and  this  last  includes  apprenticeship.  Thus  his  points  of 
contact  with  the  business  and  social  community  in  which 
he  moved  were  almost  limitless,  and  his  was  one  of  the  *nost 
familiar  figures  in  anv  Frenchktown  or  city.  In  the  K"is- 


1 


kaskia  collection  are  examples  of  almost  every  kind  of  in- 
strument written  by  these  officials. 

No  great  addition  to  the  sum  of  our  knowledge  of  Illi- 
nois history  has  been  made  by  the  finding-  of  hurdreds  of 
such  documents  as  these  notarial  instruments.  Relatively 
little  is  to  be  made  out  of  their  tiresome  repetition  of,  "Be- 
fore the  royal  notary  in  the  Illinois."  Still  they  are  not  to 
be  neglected ;  for  careful  study  will  reveal  mucn  of  inter- 
est. First  of  all  comes  their  genealogical  information,  not 
so  important  here  in  Illinois  as  is  that  of  a  like  collection 
in  Canada ;  for  the  French  have  not  played  such  a  part  in 
building  up  the  state  as  have  their  cousins  *n  the  country 
over  the  border.  Nevertheless  many  families  in  southern 
Illinois  and  in  St.  Louis  will  be  glad  to  glean  information 
from  these  records  in  regard  to  their  ancestors.  Perhaps  in 
the  future  these,  old  notarial  acts  will  be  even  more  valuable, 
for  from  one  of  these  French  families  may  be  descended  our 
future  Shakespeare  or  Oliver  Cromwell. 

But  the  genealogical  interest  is  not  the  <~>nly  one.  The 
information  in  regard  to  business  methods,  prices  of  goods, 
in  short  about  the  whole  business  and  social  life  of  these 
French  is  by  no  means  small.  These  long  inventories  of 
household  articles  will  enable  us  to  control  certain  extrava- 
gant statements  about  the  magnificence  of  the  homes  of  the 
settlers,  made  by  writers  whom  the  romance  of  these  French 
colonies  has  partially  blinded  by  its  glamour. 

The  notarial  instruments,  although  the  most  numerous, 
are  by  no  means  the  most  important.  The  palm  must  be 
given  to  the  court  records,  whether  in  books  or  loose  papers. 
With  the  aid  of  these,  and  they  are  fortunately  numerous, 
may  be  traced  the  changing  forms  of  government  in  this 
region  as  has  never  been  done  up  to  this  time.  Among  the 
papers  are  many  petitions  for  justice  and  for  the  assignment 
of  land,  dating  from  every  period  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Depositions  before  the  various  magistrates,  reports  of  trials 
and  the  final  execution  of  the  decision  of  the  court  are  not 
lacking.  There  are  twenty  pages  of  a  record  of  the  sessions 
of  the  court  under  the  French  regime,  very  fragmentary 
in  character,  so  many  pages  having  been  lost.  The  first 
record  is  of  a  session  in  the  year  1737,  the  last  in  1765.  For 
the  English  period  there  is  no  similar  document  in  the  col- 
lection ;  but  in  the  Wisconsin  Historical  Library  are  records 
of  co'  <rt  sessions  of  this  period,  which  must  have  come  from 


50 


the  Chester  court-house.  The  Virginia  court  established 
at  Kaskaskia  in  1779  has  not  left  the  complete  minutes  of 
its  sessions,  as  has  its  sister  court  at  Cahokia.  Instead,  its 
very  incomplete  and  meagre  records  are  found  scattered  on 
the  blank  pages  of  old  record-books  and  stray  scraps  of 
papers.  Thus  at  Chester  I  found  six  pages  of  a  record 
covering  the  years  1779  to  1782 ;  and,  as  you  know,  there 
are  similar  entries  for  two  later  years  in  the  back  of  John 
Todd's  record-book.  Such  evidence  leads  me  to  suspect 
that  the  government  of  Kaskaskia  had  trouble  in  furnishing 
its  clerk  with  blank  paper. 

Another  class  of  documents  corresponds  to  the  books 
kept  by  our  recorders.  They  contain  the  registry  of  promis- 
sory notes,  donations,  agreements  of  all  kinds,  occasionally 
an  ordinance  or  a  proclamation,  letters  of  instruction,  and 
action  taken  by  the  community.  For  the  French  period 
there  is  a  record-book  in  which  were  kept  th°.  reg:stry  of 
the  appointment  of  guardians  for  minors  and  of  the  renun- 
ciation of  community  of  goods  by  wives  or  widows.  This 
last  was  a  formal  act  made  before  the  clerk  of  the  court  to 
save  from  creditors  the  marriage  portion  of  the  wife.1  The 
book  contains  68  pages,  but  only  32  were  used  by  the  French 
court,  the  dates  of  the  entries  being  1737  to  1743.  The  rest 
of  the  book  was  used  by  the  clerk  of  the  Virginia  court  as 
a  record  of  deeds  for  the  years  1779  to  1783.  The  best  pre- 
served of  this  class  of  books  is  the  one  kept  during  the  Brit- 
ish period.  There  were  originally  444  pages  in  it,  but  41 
are  now  missing.  It  contains  copies  of  many  documents  of 
the  earlier  date  as  well  as  newly  redacted  acts.  Some  of 
these  are  in  English,  but  most  of  them  in  French.  The  hand- 
writing of  one  of  the  clerks,  who  kept  this  record,  is  very 
clear,  and  the  whole  book  is  a  good  specimen  of  the  re- 
corder's art. 

Still  another  class  of  papers  is  formed  by  the  letters, 
generally  written  to  the  magistrates  in  reference  to  legal 
matters ;  but  they  are  not  all  of  this  character.  The  number 
from  the  French  period  is  very  small,  from  the  British  much 
larger  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  later  period.  There  are 
several  letters  from  the  Spanish  commandant  in  St.  Louis 
to  the  British  commandant  and  later  to  the  Virginia  jus- 
tices of  the  peace. 

The  last  class  of  documents  can  only  be  classified  as 

lViollet,  Hist,  du  Droit  Civil  Francaia,  Paris,  1905,  pp.  823-848. 

51 


miscellaneous.  Among  them  are  found  some  of  the  most 
interesting  and  for  our  purposes  most  valuable  papers,  and 
it  will  be  worth  while  to  call  your  attention  to  a  few  of  them. 
Historians  of  Illinois  have  always  affirmed  that  the  first  pop- 
ular election  occurred  in  the  spring  of  1779,  when  Colonel 
John  Todd  established  the  government  of  the  County  of  Illi- 
nois ;  and  recently  I  prided  myself  on  proving  that  the  first 
election  by  the  people  took  place  in  the  preceding  year  j1  but 
the  Kaskaskia  papers  contain  evidence  of  the  holding  of  elec- 
tions in  the  territory  of  Illinois  before  John  Toad  was  born. 
One  of  the  papers  is  a  certificate  of  the  election  of  Joseph 
Aubuchon  as  syndic  by  the  inhabitants  of  Kaskaskia  in  the 
year  1739.  The  certificate  itself  asserts  that  a  similar  elec- 
tion occurred  the  year  before  and  we  may  take  it  for  grant- 
ed that  they  were  yearly  events.  Of  course  the  duties  of 
syndic  were  not  very  important,  the  principal  one  being  to 
look  after  the  enclosed  fields  of  the  community. 

An  even  more  important  document  comes  out  of  the 
period  of  the  British  occupation.  It  is  an  outline  of  a  popu- 
lar government  drawn  up  by  some  officer  and  made  public 
for  discussion.  The  paper  bears  neither  date  nor  place  nor 
signature.  It  must  have  been  issued  after  the  Quebec  act 
in  1773  and  probably  dates  from  the  year  1775,  when  the 
king  of  England  issued  a  letter  of  instructions  about  the 
civil  government  for  Canada  and  Illinois.2  The  program 
provides  for  the  following  appointive  officers,  a  governor 
of  the  territory,  and  magistrates  with  deputies  for  Kaskaskia, 
Cahokia  and  a  district  composed  of  the  other  three  villages. 
The  governor  is  to  be  assisted  by  five  or  six  councillors 
elected  by  the  inhabitants.  Thess  with  the  governor  form  a 
grand  council.  The  magistrates  have  jurisdiction  in  minor 
civil  and  criminal  cases.  The  next  higher  couit  is  com- 
posed of  the  three  magistrates  sitting  together  at  Kaskaskia. 
From  this  "Chamber  of  Kaskaskia"  an  appeal  may  be  made 
to  the  grand  council,  and  the  decision  of  this  body  is  to  be 
final.  This  body  also  is  to  have  certain  legislative  power. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  such  a  government  was  ever  estab- 
lished ;  nor  was  there  time,  for  in  the  spring  of  1770  t.ie 

1Mason,  Illinois  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  55  ;  Moses,  Illinois,  His- 
torical and  Statistical,  I.,  160  ;  Bulletin  of  the  111.  State  Hist.  Lib.,  Vol.  I., 
No.  1,  p.  19. 

"Report  concerning  Canadian  Archives,  1&04,  p.  233. 


British  troops  were  removed  from  Illinois  and  anarchy  seems 
to  have  prevailed  for  the  next  two  years.1 

I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  another  of  the  miscel- 
laneous papers,  not  so  much  for  its  historic  worth  as  for  its 
antiquarian  interest.  It  is  the  combined  voting  list  and  bal- 
lot: used  in  the  election  of  1781.  The  paper  is  large  and 
ruled  in  squares.  Along  the  top  the  candidates  wrote  their 
names  and  at  the  side  were  written  the  names  of  the  voters 
as  they  appeared  at  the  polls.  Each  voter  signified  his  choice 
for  the  four  judges  to  be  elected  and  marks  were  made  in 
the  corresponding  squares.  This  is  the  oldest  voting  list 
preserved  in  the  Northwest.  The  number  of  candidates 
was  sixteen,  of  voters  twenty-seven.  The  candidate  receiv- 
ing the  largest  vote  was  Antoine  Morin,  who  was  the  choice 
of  twenty  electors.  There  is  something  suspicious  about  the 
announcement  of  the  result  by  the  clerk  of  the  court,  who 
acted  as  judge  of  election ;  for  he  first  wrote  the  name  of 
Pierre  Langlois,  who  received  only  eighteen  votes,  as  the 
new  president  of  the  court ;  then  scratched  the  name  out  and 
substituted  the  name  of  Jean  Baptiste  Charleville,  who  ac- 
cording to  the  balloting  did  not  receive  any  votes  at  all, 
and,  if  I  have  made  out  the  names  of  the  candidates  cor- 
rectly, was  not  even  running  for  office.  It  looks  queer  to  say 
the  least ;  but  since  there  was  no  attempt  to  alter  the  list  of 
votes  cast,  there  is  probably  some  explanation,  which  would 
exonerate  the  clerk. 

These  three  papers  from  the  miscellaneous  documents 
can  hardly  be  taken  as  fair  samples  of  their  class,  since  they 
were  selected  for  their  striking  character.  Yet  all  these 
papers  are  worth  close  study  and  will  yield  a  rich  reward. 

Before  leaving  the  Kaskaskia  papers  it  will  be  well 
to  notice  more  particularly  some  of  the  problems  of  eigh- 
teenth century  Illinois  history,  that  they  will  assist  in  solv- 
ing. It  is  surprising  how  little  critical  work  has  yet  been 
clone  in  the  history  of  this  State.  This  is  true  not  only  of 
the  eighteenth  century  but  also  of  the  nineteenth,  although 
the  latter  has  naturally  received  the  greater  attention,  still 
the  whole  field  is  a  very  fertile  one  in  which  to  dig. 

Consider  the  subject  of  the  government  of  the  district 
of  Illinois  under  the  French.  Do  we  know  the  actual  work- 
ing of  this  complicated  machinery  introduced  by  the  French 
monarch  and  his  ministers?  Historians  have  been  only  too 

^laeou,  Philippe  de  Rochelave,  Chicago  Hist.  Soc.  Collections,  Vol. 
IV.,  p.  306. 

53 


ready  to  follow  without  question  the  superficial  sketch  of  it 
by  Pittman  in  his  "Present  State  of  the  European  Settle- 
ments," in  which  he  says  that  the  government  was  in  the 
hands  cf  the  commandant  and  that  the  officer  called  com- 
missaire  and  judge  was  "a  mere  cipher  rather  kept  for  form 
than  for  real  use."  Starting  with  this  information,  writers 
have  given  free  play  to  their  imaginations  and  either  have 
described  the  government  as  a  military  tyranny;  or  have 
painted  for  us  a  picture  of  Arcadian  simplicity,  where  law 
courts  were  unknown  and  disputes  settled  by  arbitrators  or 
the  priest,  where  contracts  were  made,  land  exchanged  and 
debts  paid  on  the  honor  and  faith  of  men  without  the  inter- 
vention of  the  government.  Neither  picture  is  correct.  The 
Kaskaskia  papers  show  that  the  French  kings  have  followed 
in  America  the  same  policy,  which  had  proven  for  cen- 
turies so  successful  in  building  up  and  maintaining  their 
centralized  power  in  France,  namely,  the  multiplication  of 
officials,  so  that  the  French  love  of  office-holding  might  be 
satisfied,  even  if  one-half  of  the  population  was  appointed 
to  rule  over  the  other.  In  Illinois  we  find  a  fully  developed 
civil  government  without  whose  authority  nothing  could 
be  done.  This  restraint  upon  the  initiative  of  the  colonists 
it  without  doubt  one  of  the  principal  causes  of  the  failure 
of  France  as  a  colonizing  power.  The  anarchy  and  license 
of  American  frontier  life,  giving  as  it  did  the  utmost  free- 
dom to  individual  initiative,  proved  a  far  more  effective, 
method  of  winning  a  new  country  from  its  savage  inhabi- 
tants than  the  attempted  orderly  government  of  the  French 
settlements,  which  defeated  its  own  ends  by  checking  in- 
dividual enterprise. 

The  Kaskaskia  papers  will  make  it  possible  to  work  ont 
the  system  of  government  established  by  France  in  the  dis- 
trict of  the  Illinois.  There  is  no  time  to  enter  into  details, 
but  it  may  be  well  to  indicate  more  precisely  the  conditions 
of  French  Illinois.  While  the  territory  was  under  the  Royal 
Company  of  the  Indies,  it  was  at  first  governed  as 
a  province  rather  than  as  a  district,  at  least  I  notice  acts  of 
a  body  called  "Superior  Council  of  the  Province  of  Illinois.'' 
After  the  region  of  the  Mississippi  valley  became  a  royal 
province,  the  civil  government  of  Illinois  was  under  an  offi- 
cer who  styled  himself,  "Principal  Scrivener- of  the  Marin^ 
Subdelegate  of — ,  Commissaire  and  Judge  of  the  Civil  Court 
in  the  district  of  the  Illinois."  He  was  assisted  by  a  royal 


attorney,  a  guardian  of  the  warehouse,  a  treasurer,  a  clerk 
with  deputies,  bailiffs,  notaries,  syndics  and  probably  others. 
Several  of  these  offices  were  held  by  one  man.  If  the  uni- 
versal French  custom  was  followed,  certain  of  them  formed 
a  council  for  the  judge.  They  all  had  their  duties  and  the 
Kaskaskia  records  show  that  they  performed  them  regu- 
larly, so  that  there  can  be  no  question  here  of  a  paper  gov- 
ernment, and  the  eighteenth  century  Frenchmen  knew  better 
than  to  treat  his  superiors  as  "mere  ciphers."  Up  to  the 
time  of  the  Seven  Years/  War  careful  supervision  was  main- 
tained by  France  over  this  region;  but  from  that  time  the 
officials  became  careless  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties  and 
many  irregularities  were  practised. 

There  is  no  satisfactory  history  of  the  British  occupa- 
tion of  the  Northwest  and  particularly  of  Illinois.  The  rea- 
sons for  this  condition  are  many.  The  occupation  was  only 
temporary  in  character,  and  therefore  has  been  judged  tem- 
porary in  its  effects ;  the  interest  in  these  few  years  has 
been  largely  expended  on  the  military  operations  without 
any  attempt  to  understand  the  governmental,  economic  and 
social  facts;  the  sources  have  been  meagre  except  for  the 
military  side  of  the  history.  The  result  is  that  there  is  no 
one  book  which  gives  a  correct  sketch  of  the  efforts  of  the 
British  to  rule  their  new  subjects  on  the  Mississippi  or  of 
the  influence  on  commerce  exercised  by  the  English  mer- 
chants, who  tried  to  turn  the  course  of  trade  from  the  New 
Orleans  route  to  paths  it  once  had  followed  in  the  early 
years  of  the  French  occupation ;  or  of  the  influence  of  these 
new  traders  on  the  French  political  ideas. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  Kaskaskia  papers  will 
enable  us  to  solve  all  the  problems  connected  with  the 
British  occupation ;  but  considering  the  length  of  the  period 
— a  few  months  less  than  thirteen  years — the  collection  is 
particularly  rich  in  new  material.  I  have  already  mentioned 
the  recorder's  book  with  its  numerous  deeds,  many  of  them 
deeds  to  land  bought  by  men  with  Anglo-Saxon  names ;  and 
others,  business  contracts,  bills  and  accounts.  Also  the 
private  and  public  letters,  which  begin  to  be  an  important 
element  in  the  collection  from  this  date,  will  prove  invalu- 
able. There  are  also  sufficient  court  documents  to  show  the 
character  of  the  government.  Since  all  these  papers  will 
add  to  cur  knowledge  of  the  conditions  at  the  time  of  the 
coming  of  George  Rogers  Clark  and  the  Virginians,  his- 

55 


torians  of  the  Northwest  will  regard  them  as  forming  one 
of  the  most  important  parts  of  the  collection. 

If  little  has  been  known  about  the  period  of  the  British 
occupation,  still  less  has  been  our  knowledge  of  the  suc- 
ceeding period.  For  the  conquest,  we  have  Clark's  letters 
and  memoirs  with  other  sources;  and  for  the  establishment 
of  a  civil  government,  the  Virginia  act,  Patrick  Henry's 
letter  and  John  Todd's  Record-Book,  so  that  for  the  years 
1778  and  1779  there  has  never  been  felt  any  lack  of  informa- 
tion, inadequate  as  it  is  at  times.  But  for  the  following  years, 
when  Illinois  was  left  to  herself,  when  those  courts  estab- 
lished by  John  Todd  and  the  militia  officers  were  the  only 
representatives  of  law  and  order  in  the  territory,  for  these 
years  there  has  been  up  to  the  present  time  no  information, 
or  rather  very  little,  which  was  both  contemporary  and  local 
in  its  origin.  Among  the  Kaskaskia  papers  there  is  no 
record  equalling  in  importance  the  three  hundred  page 
~ecord-book  of  the  Cahokia  court,  which  has  been  preserved 
at  Belleville ;  but  papers  of  every  description  are  very  num- 
erous, and,  since  Kaskaskia  was  regarded  as  the  county- 
seat,  are  very  important.  From  these  two  collections,  the 
Kaskaskia  and  the  Cahokia  papers,  it  will  now  be  possible 
to  write  the  history  of  the  years  1778  to  1790  from  sources 
originating  in  the  French  communities.  To  indicate  more 
precisely  the  character  of  this  new  information  is  impos- 
sible; for  every  month,  for  every  week  there  may  be  found 
illustrative  material.  We  may  follow  the  feeble  attempts 
of  the  French  at  self-government;  the  struggles  of  the 
magistrates  to  maintain  order;  their  disputes  with  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  military  power ;  their  relations  with  the 
Spanish  government;  the  measures  taken  by  themselves  to 
ward  off  the  British ;  and  the  gradual  infiltration  of  the 
Americans. 

Such  are  the  Kaskaskia  papers  and  such  is  the  history 
of  the  collection.  Their  recovery  must  be  regarded  as  an 
important  event  in  the  history  of  Illinois  historical  studies, 
since  they  throw  light  on  every  period  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  But  their  importance  must  not  be  exaggerated,  in- 
teresting though  they  are  as  records  of  a  romantic  period 
of  our  past ;  for  in  reading  the  crabbed  hand-writing  of  these 
earliest  documents  of  the  Northwest,  the  historian  cannot 
but  feel  that  his  enthusiasm  is  akin  to  that  of  the  anti- 
quarian; for  from  these  French  settlers  did  not  spring  the 


F,6 


forces  that  have  made  Illinois  one  of  the  great  States  of  our 
Union.  Our  true  history  begins  with  the  coming  of  the  Vir- 
ginians, and  in  so  far  as  the  Kaskaskia  papers  shed  light  on 
that  event,  they  are  of  great  historical  value.  Only  incident- 
ly  are  the  events  connected  with  the  names  of  Boisbriant, 
D'Artaguiette  and  Delaloere  Flancour  of  interest  to  the 
historian,  his  interest  springing  from  the  love  of  truth  and 
accuracy  and  his  desire  to  know  exactly  what  did  occur  be- 
fore the  coming  of  the  builders  of  the  State ;  but  it  is  not 
until  he  reads  in  these  papers  the  names  of  Thomas  Brady, 
of  John  Edgar  and  of  Shadrack  Bond,  that  he  feels  that 
he  is  studying  live  forces  incarnated  in  the  men  who  have 
assisted  in  the  winning  of  the  West. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS  URBANA 

9773AL890  C001 

THE  Mt  RECORDS  CHGO 

K  V,K  \«.  Kl  A 


30112025378511 


